


Riding the Gyre (or, The Little Merboy)

by Rokeon



Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Fairy Tales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-31
Updated: 2007-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rokeon/pseuds/Rokeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mermaid AU. John was the Sea King’s youngest son</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riding the Gyre (or, The Little Merboy)

**Author's Note:**

> Art! [merboy!John](http://pentapus.livejournal.com/159792.html), by [Pentapus](http://pentapus.livejournal.com)

The sea is eternal. All-encompassing water, comfortable and familiar, is supported by the impenetrable bedrock and in turn supports the insubstantial air. The reefs flourish, as they always have, just as the tides have always turned and the fish have always schooled. There has never been a year in which the kelp failed to grow or the currents ceased to flow. Even the merfolk, unusual as they may be, are as much a part of the forever-sea as the plankton and the salt. It’s only natural that they hold such a fear of change.  
  


The great city was static for years, for centuries, for longer than any concept that the merfolk have of time. Still they shunned it, because fragments of legends and echoes of myths told of a time when the city was vibrant and living and _different_. Haunted by the dead, they called it nervously, cursed to lie on the ocean floor but never feel the touch of the sea. They diligently avoided its quiet grave and flipped their tales to avert evil whenever they were reminded of its presence. They did not speak its name.  
  


John was different. The youngest son of the Sea King, clever and bold and too curious by half, he loved to hear the stories of an era before time. He had them from his grandmother, who had them from her grandmother, who had them in turn from a long line of mermatrons stretching back farther than memory. They were fantastic tales: stories of a time when the skies above the ocean were as populous as the waters below and of a strange people who inhabited the magnificent city before it died its terrible death. While it still lived, though, while it still lived! The city was like a gull, she told him, webbed hands stretched wide to describe an impossible wingspan, a great crystal bird that could alight on the waves to rest and then take flight again as easy as it pleased.  
  


“Flight” was a strange concept to John. He imagined that it must be like swimming, just with wings instead of fins, but he could not understand how birds swam through the sky when there was nothing there to swim _in_.  
  


His brothers teased him endlessly for listening to their grandmother’s stories. He was three years past swimming the gyre, they pointed out, too old for silly children’s fancies. They would have spoken differently if they had known the truth, known that John had braved the city’s whispered ghosts two full years before he had challenged the gyre. No one else ever ventured close but he had swum among the spires, looked for those rumored spirits, and felt the unbreakable surface tension of the inexplicable force that held back the sea.  
  


It was a perfect place to go when he wanted to be alone. So John was the only witness when the city lit up, shook itself, and woke; _sleeping_ , not dead. He saw the sudden rush of tension breaking and water moving in as the affronted ocean tried furiously to force it back into submission. For one fleeting moment he even pressed his face to one of the glowing crystal panes and saw the figments of his grandmother’s tales brought to life: strange beings, half merfolk and half not, their speech faintly audible but completely incomprehensible.  
  


He stayed as long as he dared before swimming back to the colony. It was in an uproar when he returned, and at first he thought he was caught, but then he learned that the rumbling tremor of the city’s ascension had been felt for a very great distance. It was fear that had agitated them, not anger. John ducked past his brothers, swam away from the thunderous voice of his father, and went searching for the one person he could count on to be sensible. He went to find his grandmother.  
  


***  
  


Explaining everything that had happened took time, and afterwards John and his grandmother both agreed that it would be best to lie low until the others could calm down. They retold the ancient stories while they waited, his grandmother dredging her memory for more old shards and John making up new ones to patch them together. Eventually the shouting quieted, order was restored, and they heeded the Sea King’s booming call for all of the folk to gather.  
  


They swam to the meeting place and John went up to his place at the end of the line of his brothers. He listened as his father explained what had happened, bit his tongue and tried not to laugh at the absurdity of some of the panicky comments he could hear being whispered in the crowd. Then he bit his tongue and tried not to protest as he heard his father declared a ban on all of the waters near the city. Anyone who endangered them all by breaking his order would be banished to the farthest reach of the merfolk’s territory, forced to live out their days in the freezing water beneath the massive icecap to the distant south. The king’s gaze caught John’s eye as he spoke, just for a moment, and John felt his blood go cold with the knowledge that being a prince of the ocean would not save him from the same horrible fate.  
  


He behaved. He stayed away from the city, bowed to the pressures of his brothers, and told no one else what he had seen. He grew quiet and withdrawn and took to spending more time with the great _flagisalis_ whales than with his kin or age-mates. They had always loved the attention of the merfolk and John found that he preferred their company to the presence of his own kind as well.  
  


The Sea King did not approve of his youngest child’s newest isolation, but he let it pass unchallenged. John had caused less mischief in the last season than he had in any season since he had learned to swim a straight line. And the whales had long memories, even longer than he knew, but their song was a foreign language John had not yet learned and no one had ever gotten in trouble simply by swimming with them.  
  


He might have reconsidered his opinion if he considered how often John was unlike the other merfolk. He certainly would have if he had known that the young _flagisalis_ John had befriended was particularly attracted to shiny metal objects. 


End file.
